Life During Wartime

Department of Theatre & Drama: Season 2000-2001
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The Indiana University Department of Theatre and Drama opens its 2000-2001 T300 Studio Theatre season with Keith Reddin's Life During Wartime, October 20, 21, 23-28. Performances begin at 7:00 P.M., with Saturday matinees beginning at 2:00 P.M. The theatre opens one half-hour before the performance.

“Let's be realistic—it's a dangerous world,” says one of the characters in Life During Wartime, winner of the San Diego Critics' Circle Award for Best New Play. Keith Reddin examines the dangers and fears of modern life in this serious comedy about trust, love, and home-security salesmen. Punctuated with zany appearances by Swiss theologian John Calvin, Life During Wartime is, according to the Seattle Times, a “sharply satirical exploration of American moral malaise ... interweaving the personal and plitical, the antic and the tragic.”

Photo of actors Tommy (Arian Moayed) and Gale (Carol Enoch) in Life During Wartime.

Tommy (Arian Moayed) and Gale (Carol Enoch) share a moment in Life During Wartime.

Here are some notes on the play from our Audience Development office:

What happens when home security salesmen create crime rather than prevent it? Simultaneously funny, absurd and menacing, Life During Wartime attempts to answer that question. The Indiana University T300 Studio Theatre opens its 2000-2001 season with Life During Wartime by Keith Reddin on October 20. The play continues October 21, 23-28.

Life During Wartime represents a new genre of American theatre. Director Dennis Black states, "I don't think we have a category for this new type of theatre. During the last twenty years playwrights have been writing in a style that is not defined by one term–a more eclectic style of writing." In the production, young, naive Tommy Ballard (Arian Moayed) is in the security game, a newly recruited salesman pushing home burglar-alarm systems. "You don't have to sell fear - it sells itself," Heinrich (Ira Amyx), Tommy’s sinister boss, advises. In the suburban households he visits, Tommy promotes the fear and paranoia that lurk everywhere in a society besieged by crime. On his first house call, Tommy not only makes a sale but also unexpectedly falls in love with Gale (Carol Enoch), a sexy older woman with an unhappy teenage son (Jose Antonio Garcia).

Photo of actors Peter Gerharz, Molly Thomas,
and Arian Moayed in Life During Wartime.
Mr. Fielding (Peter Gerharz) and his wife (Molly Thomas) discuss home protection services with Tommy (Arian Moayed) in Life During Wartime.

Meanwhile, across town, an older couple (Molly Thomas, Peter Gerharz) has outfitted their suburban castle with an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons. Crashing the scene now and then is John Calvin (Peter Gerharz), the voice of the Protestant Reformation who playfully reminds the audience of the essential wickedness of all human beings. Black describes Calvin as "our narrator of sorts. I have selected to use a ‘film noir’ quality and feel in the production and ‘film noir’ depends heavily on narration."

Dennis Black received his MFA in Directing from the Indiana University department of Theatre and Drama, where he recently directed his thesis project, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (2000). He recently appeared onstage as Bill in the Brown County Playhouse production of It Runs in the Family. Dennis lived in New York City for 16 years where he was the founding Artistic Director of a non-profit theatre, The Original Cast. He has directed Equus, Blue Window, Escape From Happiness, and Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Butler University and Days and Nights of an Ice Cream Princess at the Courtyard Theatre in New York City.

The design team consists of Jason Lambdin (Scenic Design), Becky Hardy (Lighting Design), and Beth Laske-Miller (Costume Design).

Life During Wartime plays October 20, 21, and 23-28. Please note: all T300 evening performances will begin at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are available at the IU Auditorium box office. Tickets for all performances are $8.50, $7.50 for students and seniors. Tickets may also be purchased by phone through all TicketMaster locations (812-333-9955). For ticket information, call 812-855-1103. Parking is available in the Jordan Avenue Parking Garage located east of the theatre, or in the Main Library parking lot, located north of the theatre. Due to construction, please allow plenty of time to find parking.